A tool and his vape should be parted

It can't kill you, it ain't cool.

I am totally down with my ecig, and vaping is pretty much the shit as far as I am concerned, but I have a few friends who told me I look douchey and that vaping is just a fad. Are they right or wrong, and what should I tell them?

— Patrick

If you have to ask, “Does this make me look like a tool?” then it probably makes you look like a tool. The late Bill Hicks famously justified his smoking by saying that he would be “willing to die seven years before his time, just so that [he would] be cool,” or something to that effect. Since vaping won’t kill you, it therefore can’t make you cool. But take heart, Patrick, the tide is turning against smoking. Where once the question “smoking or non-?” thrived, our bars and restaurants have all been purged of first-, second-, and third-hand smoke in an effort to protect the innocent. Technically speaking, that’s probably not a bad thing, but subtle irony colors the wholesale castigation of smokers. Time was, people perceived smoking as a symbol of devil-may-care sensibilities, the kind of “rebel coolness” that Hicks believed his smoking imparted him. Of course, smoking was way more of a regular thing then, to the extent that cigarette companies advertised to children. Nowadays, smokers have been so marginalized that smoking actually is a rebellious activity, but nobody thinks the actual rebellion is cool. There’s a short and pointed lesson in irony right there, but not the gentle, hipster kind that makes wearing acid-washed jeans and tank tops cool. We prefer not to indulge in such fierce and dangerous irony, thank you very much.